The Unfamiliar (2020)
I was about to give The Unfamiliar âpointsâ for making its awfulness immediately obvious. Then, I got to the ending. Thereâs no way you can foresee what it has in store for you, which at least makes it âfunâ to talk about.
Elizabeth âIzzyâ Cormack (Jemima West) returns home after a long tour in Afghanistan. Tormented by hallucinations, she dismisses PTSD and becomes convinced something evil inhabits the house - a presence likely related to the trip her husband (Christopher Dane as Ethan), step-daughter Emma (Rebecca Hanssen), son Tommy (Harry McMilan-Hunt), and infant daughter Lilly (Beatrice Woolrych) took to Hawaii a few months ago.
The spookiness begins when something unseen nearly kills Izzy in the garage. Objects are moving on their own, her son's acting like a weirdo. Either thereâs something evil here or sheâs losing her mind. Either way, people should be a lot more worried. The movieâs not telling us something and it must be related to the trip to Hawaii, those creepy drawings pasted all over Ethanâs office, and/or the âimaginaryâ friend her son speaks to. Only one scene in the first 45 minutes manages to generate any kind of fear. Youâre getting fed up. What is going on in this boring, predictable horror film?
As if on cue, writer/director/producer Henk Pretorius pulls a wild revelation out of nowhere. After another horrifying vision, Izzy calls the psychic (Ben Lee) she just happened to meet earlier. A seance is held. Ghosts confirmed! And then Izzy reviews the footage she shot from the so-obvious-you-could-never-miss-it camera she installed earlier. The psychic's a fraud. Does she confront him? No. That's in the past and the movie's headed to Hawaii where we'll surely find some answers.
Now we FINALLY learn whatâs going on. Ethan did not bring a cursed item from the island home with him. He and Emma had their souls pushed out of their bodies by murder victims who lived in the house they're staying in. They want to do the same to Izzy so all three of the people weâve never met and havenât even heard of until now can live again. Itâs the cheapest kind of twist; the kind that bursts through the wall without warning and beats you silly with nonsense. It explains some of what we saw earlier but raises dozens of questions. You thought the movie was almost over? Turns out it was just getting its premise set up the whole time!
Most horror movies ruin their scares by explaining too much. The Unfamiliar does the opposite. It tells you so little you canât make heads or tails of it. This would be hilarious if it werenât so boring. Each twist is followed by another. By the third, youâre desperate. You donât care if the Earth explodes and everyone dies as long as it ends but the movie offers no mercy. Itâs got to get that one final jab, that one âthe evil lives onâ âscareâ we've seen a thousand times. If it really wanted to create shrieks of terror, it shouldâve thrown âto be continuedâ across the screen. Being subjected to more of this? Now THAT'S scary. (November 25, 2020)
